PBSC student volunteer Kathy Moulton wins Lexpert Platinum Award

Kathy Moulton, a PBSC student volunteer from the University of New Brunswick, has been selected as the winner of a Lexpert Zenith Award. This year, the Zenith Awards are honouring firms, in-house departments and students who commit their time, skills and mentorship to a valuable range of pro bono activities, and will be presented on September 28, 2010 at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto. The Zenith Awards’ advisory board includes PBSC National Director Nikki Gershbain, who congratulated Kathy on her win. “Although I did not vote on Kathy’s award, I was delighted that her commitment and dedication to access to justice and family law was honoured by my colleagues on the advisory board,” she said.

Kathy is the Platinum winner in the category of Pro Bono by a Law Student, and is being recognized for her tremendous work creating PBSC’s Family Law Legal Information Project (FLLIP) at UNB. The project enables PBSC student volunteers to provide free legal information to women who have experienced domestic violence in Fredericton. Kathy recruited student and lawyer volunteers, developed a comprehensive training program for the students and secured office space for the project, all while maintaining her position as program coordinator for the university’s PBSC chapter. “Kathy completely reinvigorated and expanded our PBSC chapter,” says Dean David Townsend of UNB’s Faculty of Law. “She placed about 60 law student volunteers with 40 community organizations. Our law school is not large enough to support a clinic, and Kathy’s activities provided an alternative experience that was important for the professional formation of our students.”

Seven of those law students volunteered with FLLIP, and together with five supervising lawyers, they assisted ten unrepresented litigants from local shelters. “Not only is the program empowering, but the information has the potential to alleviate a lot of stress and anxiety,” says Judy Loukes, executive director of the Liberty Lane women’s shelter. “I applaud Kathy for taking the initiative when she saw the need and I applaud the successful results.”

Kathy continued her dedication to pro bono service this past summer, working as the executive director of New Brunswick Pro Bono, where she created a new legal clinic in Fredericton. She is now entering her third and final year at UNB, and will begin her articles with the Newfoundland Legal Aid Commission in 2011.

Lexpert generously flew Kathy to Toronto to accept her award. That evening, she was one of two individuals to win a $1,000 gift certificate for the high-end furniture design store Roche Bobois, proving that social justice work and style can go hand in hand!